Wedding planning gives actress Mena Suvari the jitters

It may have rained on Mena Suvari’s Vegas party but that didn’t stop the actress’ parade.

Saturday’s scattered showers meant she spent most of her time at the Palazzo pool in one of Azure’s cabanas, but the 30-year-old actress knows there is more to Las Vegas than the hotel pool.

She says she comes here about once a month.

“I was here a couple weeks ago,” she said. “It’s so close to LA; it’s convenient.”

And when she comes to Vegas, Suvari knows what she likes and where she likes it.

“I go to the spa, I work out, and I play poker,” she said.

“I love the Canyon Ranch Spa,” she said before noting her two favorite poker pits, the Venetian and the Bellagio.

And don’t let her sweet-as-sweet-can-be smile fool you: Suvari plays a mean game of poker.

In fact, she won a World Poker Tour celebrity tournament a few years back.

“That was, like, the highlight of my poker career,” she laughed yesterday while lounging in her cabana at Azure. “I have a little trophy at home.”

Suvari’s most prominent shiny thing, however, is the 8-carat stunner that fiancé Simone Sestito gave her last year.

“He proposed in Toronto,” she said of her real life leading man, a Canadian-Italian concert promoter. “It was a very private exchange.”

“He got down on one knee and it was really nice,” she recalled. “He was very nervous and I was really nervous.”

While Suvari has acting projects on the table, her biggest project right now is planning her wedding. “We’re getting married in Italy,” she said, and the couple is “going all out” as they plan a June wedding for 200 guests.

Suvari will wear a dress she co-designed for her June 26, 2010, nuptials.

“I want something very … romantic-chic but a little bit of twist of modern,” she said of the dress, which she is creating with the help of a friend who is a designer.

Though she has been married once before, to German-born cinematographer Robert Brinkmann, Suvari said things won’t be the same this time around.

“This is very different,” she said. “I love Simone. I love everything about him,” she said.

Despite it being her second wedding, she said all the planning gives her a slight case of the jitters.

“I am very nervous,” she said, “When I was married before we eloped.”

Suvari and her soon-to-be-husband will wait “maybe another year” before starting their family, she said.

“All my friends have babies,” she explained. “All my brothers have babies; everybody has kids, so it’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to have a baby!’”

She feels it’s time to start a family. “I’m 30,” the fresh-faced actress laughed, suggesting she feels her biological clock is ticking. “(I) look forward to having a family.”

In addition to planning a wedding and her future family, the award-winning actress still finds time to act.

“I just finished a film in May called ‘You May Not Kiss the Bride’,” she said. “It’s a romantic comedy with Rob Schneider and Vinnie Jones.”

She plays the role of Tonya, who she describes as “smart but with a few things loose.”

Tonya falls in love with her boss, a photographer played by Dave Annable.

“He’s marrying this girl and I end up crashing the wedding, I end up crashing the honeymoon (and) stalking him,” she said.

She and her character didn’t have all that much in common.

“Tonya has, like, huge boobs and she wears, like, tons of, like, leopard print and she is always putting on lip gloss,” Suvari said. “It was so much fun to play her, (she’s) such a mess.”

“You May Not Kiss the Bride” will debut around the same time Suvari will be a real life bride and will hit theaters next year.